Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 May 31

= May 31 =

What's stopping WHO from calling disease with country names?
If they call Spanish flu, why not WHO call Lineage B.1.617 as Indian variant? Rizosome (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The term "Spanish flu" was a slander. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 18:38, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

So Indian variant is not slander? Rizosome (talk) 18:42, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not a WHO term. It's SARS-CoV2 B1.167. WHO has not allowed any official names to refer to countries, regions,  or peoples for some years. Fgf10 (talk) 19:22, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * What is accomplished by calling a virus by the name of a country? Oh I know the answer to that one - absolutely nothing useful. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 20:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * A catchy name for selling news? In all seriousness, that's a good link by Fgf10 which answers Rizosome's question well. In condensed form, just Keiji Fukuda's quote: "This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We've seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals. This can have serious consequences for peoples' lives and livelihoods."
 * Here's another article, "Today's disease names are less catchy, but also less likely to cause stigma" by UNSW medical historian Susan Hardy. ---Sluzzelin talk  21:08, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * With some justification, lineage P.1 could be called the Bolsonaro variant. --Lambiam 21:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

In past centuries, diseases were often deliberately named after disliked nationalities; see the quote from article "Syphilis" below. This practice usually adds nothing to medical accuracy. AnonMoos (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC) "Since it was a disgraceful disease, [syphilis] was known in several countries by the name of their neighbouring country. The English, German and Italians called it 'the French disease', while the French referred to it as the 'Neapolitan disease'. The Dutch called it the 'Spanish pocks' during the Dutch Revolt.  To the Turks it was known as the 'Christian disease', whilst in India, the Hindus and Muslims named the disease after each other."

But that's different, syphilis is an STI. Which means its transmission could have been prevented if populations had behaved themselves and not committed the acts which transmit the disease. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 05:20, 1 June 2021 (UTC)


 * When a former president of a large country called SARS-CoV-2 repeatedly and emphatically "the China virus", vicious attacks in that country on people of Chinese descent increased dramatically. --Lambiam 10:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Not defending those attacks, but at the same time it's clear that the Chinese government bears great responsibility for allowing the virus to spread needlessly. They could and should have contained it much better than they did. Calling it "the China virus" is putting the blame on China, and I have no problem with that. This whole pandemic is their fault. --Viennese Waltz 10:13, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That is a very odd statistic. Violence did increase about 150%, but primarily in cities which predominantly were opposed to the President and refuted his claim that it was of Chinese origin because they assumed everything the President said was a lie. So, this implies that while a group of people will violently refute the claim that a disease comes from a country, they will also violently attack people from that country. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 12:49, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What's the statistical basis for your broad generalizations about who's doing what? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:16, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This indicates that the steep percentage rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 took place primarily in New York and Los Angeles. Do you refute that New York and Los Angeles did not vote for the President and gave the President very low approval ratings? Do you refute that news and media reports out of those cities labeled the President sexist, racist, and a liar (and continue to do so)? I am not making a claim to support or reject anything about the President. I am noting the oddity that New York and Los Angeles has such high percentage increases in anti-Asian violence when it seems that those cities should not have had an increase. Add to the situation that the increase was based on a statement from a President that those cities did not support and the statistic is more odd. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 13:52, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * New York and Los Angeles did not vote for anything. They are concepts invented in the human mind for the purpose of describing where a person lives, and for organizing governance.  Cities don't vote, people who live in cities vote.  Some of the people in New York and Los Angeles voted for each presidential candidate, and more people from New York and Los Angeles did vote for Biden than for Trump.  However, what you have not done is shown any connection between the persons who assaulted Asian Americans and who that person voted for in the election.  Unless and until you find that information, you can't make any statements to that effect one way or the other.  -- Jayron 32 14:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Hold up hold up. What? First off, nobody other than some Chinese has suggested Sars-CoV2 came from anywhere but China (or indeed "violently refute"- whatever that is supposed to mean), so that's a total strawman/lie . And you seem to think big cities are some kind of uniform hive mind? Rascist morons can be found anywhere, and can indeed also vote Democrat. So care to explain your "reasoning" (ie revisionism)? Fgf10 (talk) 15:15, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Here's the latest permutation: "Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 16:51, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * One wonders if they will also avoid stigma. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.163.176 (talk) 18:31, 1 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Cute, but it's a ligature, not a letter, and very rarely known to science types who use Greek letters... AnonMoos (talk) 18:40, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * They couldn't use the Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet Alfa – Bravo – Charlie, because then, eventually, you get the India and Quebec variants. --Lambiam 22:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd like to reverse the question: given that it is WHO policy not to name diseases after places, and given that there was such criticism of any colloquial naming of COVID19 that referenced China or Wuhan, why was it considered acceptable (until very recently) to name all the variants after countries or regions? Iapetus (talk) 10:33, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * [rant] It was "acceptable" to news media, who are largely answerable to no-one, eager to dumb-down, indifferent to any social harm they cause, and amenable to stirring up controversy and tension because it generates more "news" for them to sell [/rant].
 * On a more serious note, naming a disease or variant after the place where it was first detected (even though that may well not be the place it originated) is an easy option whose potential for social ill is not obvious without more thinking through than the average media sub-editor is wont to exercise. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.163.176 (talk) 11:29, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * They could even be named after cities: Norovirus GII.4 Sydney. After the discovery of this variant, there was no noticeable increase in attacks on Australians. The geographical indicator was not of the region where the variant originated, but of the lab that first identified it and published their findings. That was in the good old days without social media that can spread conspiracy theories before you can say Jack Robinson. In this changed world, the concomitant risks of naming a variant after the region of the identifying lab are a strong disincentive against timely making information about potentially epidemic strains available. --Lambiam 11:37, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Worth noting that influenza strains used for vaccines are still named partly after cities, states or countries including the by the WHO. See Historical annual reformulations of the influenza vaccine or [//www.who.int/influenza/vaccines/virus/recommendations/2021_south/en/]. But B/Washington/02/2019 (B/Victoria lineage)-like virus is probably harder to remember than Lineage B.1.617, so it's not really equivalent to China virus or Indian variant. Nil Einne (talk) 20:03, 2 June 2021 (UTC)